Mumbai, Sep 09: As cyber threats become increasingly automated and AI-enabled, the challenge facing organisations is no longer simply identifying vulnerabilities, but validating, prioritising and fixing them before they can be exploited at machine speed. To help financial institutions, fintechs and technology providers prepare for this shift, Visa today launched its new whitepaper, Frontier AI: A New Era of Cyber Resilience, at Global Fintech Fest 2026. The whitepaper was launched by Subra Kumaraswamy, Chief Information Security Officer, Visa and Suresh Sethi, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Visa.
The report examines how frontier AI is transforming both cyber defence and cyber risk and outlines practical strategies to help organisations strengthen resilience in an increasingly autonomous threat environment.
India’s digital payments ecosystem has become one of the largest and most dynamic in the world. Total digital payment transactions increased from 6,365 crore in 2021 to 26,762 crore in 2025, while total digital payments value grew from INR 1,675 lakh crore to INR 3,144 lakh crore over the same period. In 2025, India recorded INR 22,495 crore in cyber fraud losses across 2.81 million cases, up 24% year on year. Investment scams accounted for 76% of losses, while digital arrest scams accounted for 9%. The cybercrime helpline (1930) logged 32.4 million calls in 2025, equivalent to approximately one victim every second. As digital payments become more interconnected and AI-enabled, maintaining trust and cyber resilience is emerging as a critical priority for the broader financial ecosystem.
Launched at Global Fintech Fest 2026, the whitepaper explores how frontier AI models can identify, analyse and validate vulnerabilities at machine speed, while enabling organisations to move from periodic testing and manual remediation to continuous, intelligence-driven security operations. Drawing on Visa’s participation in Project Glasswing, the report highlights lessons from deploying advanced AI in high-criticality environments, where the time between vulnerability discovery and exploitation has shrunk from months to minutes.
AI is transforming cybersecurity, but resilience must evolve just as quickly
The report highlights a major shift in cybersecurity. Advanced AI models can perform deep analysis across complex systems, identify subtle weaknesses and uncover exploit paths that traditional approaches may miss. At the same time, attackers are increasingly leveraging AI to automate reconnaissance, phishing, fraud and exploitation, accelerating the pace of cyber threats. This changing landscape requires organisations to move beyond periodic testing and manual remediation towards continuous, intelligence-driven security operations to not just find but to fix such identified vulnerabilities quickly enough.
To address this, organisations must rethink cybersecurity effectiveness through new approaches that focus on adaptability and speed of response.
Trust remains the foundation of India’s digital payments ecosystem
As digital payments become increasingly embedded in everyday commerce, cyber resilience will play a critical role in sustaining consumer confidence and trust in the ecosystem.
The report emphasises that while AI can significantly enhance fraud detection, risk management and security operations, threat actors are also adopting the same technologies to create sophisticated cyberattacks, including deepfakes, advanced phishing campaigns and automated fraud at scale. As a result, collaboration across industry participants will be critical to safeguarding the future of digital payments.
Speaking on the importance of strengthening cyber resilience in the age of AI, Suresh Sethi, Group Country Manager, Visa India and South Asia, said:
“As AI becomes more powerful, the cybersecurity challenge is no longer just finding vulnerabilities, it is fixing them faster than they can be exploited. India’s digital payments ecosystem has demonstrated what innovation at population scale can achieve, but sustaining trust will require the same pace of innovation in security and resilience. At Visa, we are investing in practical approaches that combine AI-driven security with human oversight, governance and accountability, helping organisations strengthen resilience in an increasingly automated threat environment. We believe collaboration across the ecosystem will be critical to ensuring India’s digital economy remains secure, inclusive and future-ready.”
The whitepaper also introduces Mean Time to Adapt as a new measure of cybersecurity effectiveness, reflecting the growing need to reduce the time between vulnerability discovery and remediation. It argues that as AI accelerates the pace of both attacks and defence, organisations must complement automation with strong governance, oversight and accountability to build resilient security programmes at scale.